The Haunted Island
by themilitarygirl44
Summary: Four friends decide to take an adventure in Italy by visiting an off-limits "Haunted" Island.


A/N: This story was written when I was in 7th grade and was just starting to write. I am going to post a couple of my stories from over the years to see if y'all like where I am heading in my writing style. Tell me what you think! (I was 12 when I wrote this, so be gentle). Thanks! Oh, by the way, I used Google for the translations, so there might be textual differences than the actual language.

**The Haunted Island**

Heather, Fred, Ginger and I were best friends since we were three. Heather was the daydreamer, Fred was the intellect, the technology obsession, and I considered myself the athletic one. Although we were much different, we all loved mysteries and adventure. I recalled innumerable summer afternoons spent under the weeping willow in Fred's backyard, eyes glued to an old Agatha Christie novel from Heather's attic, watching recorded episodes of Monk in Ginger's media room, or even creating our own in my backyard.

And after all that we had gone through together, the story of our childhood ended in Venice, Italy where we would spend our last summer together. We just didn't know that our days were numbered.

* * *

Fred heaved open the magnificent door to our insanely expensive hotel room at Hotel Villa Mabapa* in Lido, an island in the Venice Lagoon. As Ginger and I explored our new living space, marveling the panoramic view, he grabbed the AAA book of Venice.

"Whoa!" he exclaimed. "This is so cool! Guys, come check this out."

Fred sat us down at the elegant dining table and pointed at the tour guide, which upon sight, I nearly fainted. There was an unmapped island between Lido and the main land of Venice called Poveglia. It was off-limits to any tourists, and local fisherman stayed far, far away from it.

"Wow. I wonder why it's off limits," I wondered aloud.

"How do you pronounce that?" Heather inquired.

Fred looked at his phone, "Well guys, we can talk at the restaurant, I'm starving." Heather and I murmured in agreement and followed him out the elegant door.

With every step we took along the Gran Viale Santa Maria Elisabella my wonder increased. I kept finding my arm inadvertently reaching for my purse to look up "Poveglia" on my iPhone, but I forced myself to focus on Heather and Frank's light conversation. We soon arrived at a small restaurant.

"Ciao, Benvenuto al Gran Viale Santa Maria Elisabella," we were greeted warmly by a short waitress with a small mustache, as my eyes feasted on the graceful crown molding and elaborate painted walls. We sat down at our table and began to order our first authentic Italian food. As we waited for Ginger to finish deciding what to order armed with a digital translator, Fred and I chatted about the new 400,000,000 Luxury RV that his rich uncle imported from Europe, and I sensed his attention being diverted. Upon mention, he retrieved his phone, and I followed suite. Listen to the table with the small kid in pig-tails. I nodded and focused to my right, where the young child's parents were talking.

"Dicono che dopo la peste della Morte Nera, un dottore pazzo ha fatto esperimenti e fondamentalmente torturati i suoi pazienti alla morte. È orribile, lo so. L'isola è infestata ora, quindi sempre stare alla larga. Stare lontano da Poveglia."

Fred and I exchanged astonished looks, eyes wide.

I received my iPhone and Googled "Poveglia". In the time we ordered and we were digging into the delicious food, I had switched my Internet connection from 3G to the public WiFi, and the page, a long one i realized, finally loaded and I read it aloud to Ginger, summarizing as I went along.

"Poveglia is located near Venice in Italy and its dark shores are strewn with polished human bones.

"When the plague of Black Death hit Italy in 1576, thousands of dead bodies were piling up in Venice and the stench was terrible. They needed somewhere to store the rotting corpses. The dead were hauled to the island and dumped in large pits or burned on huge bonfires. As the plague worsened, people began to panic, and those showing symptoms of the Black Death, including children and babies, were dragged, screaming, from their homes and taken to the island of Poveglia and thrown into the pits of rotting corpses, where they were left to die in agony. As many as 160,000 tormented bodies were dumped there over the years. The island is still covered in a layer of human ash, soil showing up to 50%, the remains of all the burned bodies. Before long, local people began seeing strange things and hearing strange sounds coming from the haunted island.

"Despite the horrid past, in 1922, a mental hospital was built on the haunted island. The patients immediately reported seeing the ghosts of rotting plague victims and hearing strange whispers echoing off the walls. But nobody believed them since they were already regarded as demented and insane. The hospital was run by a mad doctor who experimented on his live patients, trying to discover what caused insanity. His methods were crude, to say the least. Lobotomies were performed using a basic hand drill or just a hammer and chisel. The crazed patients were taken to the hospital's tower, where they were subjected to terrible tortures. After years of performing these horrible acts, the doctor himself began seeing the ghosts of plague victims. Supposedly, the ghosts rose from their graves, overpowered the doctor and dragged him up to the top of the bell tower where they tormented him and forced him to throw himself off the top of the tower, falling to his death.

"As he lay on the ground, writhing in agony, drawing his last breaths, a fine mist swirled up around him, entered his body, and choked him to death. It is rumored that the mental patients then bricked up his body in the bell tower. There his ghost remains, haunt the empty tower for all eternity, and on a quiet night the tower's bell can still be heard tolling eerily across the bay."**

The blood rushed away from my face and I saw Ginger's porcelain face turn a ghostly white. I could feel my heartbeat speed up drastically.

"Is that true?" Ginger inquired shakily.

"Yes, yes it is," I replied quietly. After I regained my breath, I realized something. "Hey, Ginger! We should go to that island, see if it's true, what they say about the ghosts and everything. It would be so cool, just like stepping into a Nancy Drew mystery."

"I... don't think so..." Ginger disagreed. "Sounds creepy."

"Come on, it'll be awesome. Besides, we didn't do anything wrong, so it's not like the ghosts would want to-"

"So you're advocating that ghosts exist and they're on that island." Ginger cringed at the thought.

"No. Well, maybe. We could also figure that out. See if ghosts actually exist."

While we argued, Fred came over and listened for a few minutes. When we were through, he agreed we should go.

"It'll be so awesome, you just wait. It will be one of the many amazing memories we will have of this trip," Fred promised Ginger with a wink.

Ginger just wanted to go home, so she left. Fred and I made a pit-stop by the store and got the essentials for the trip. At the hotel, we packed our backpacks, prepared our necessities, and called it a night.

We awoke early the next morning and took a water taxi to the boat rental station. The sky was a painting; bright blue and cloudless. We rented a Yamaha wave-runner that had a virtually silent motor. Fred pointed to a small, beautiful island with much greenery swallowing a magnificent castle.

"You guys, I think that's it," pointed at the island.

Exchanging glances with Fred, I translated the sentence to "That's Povlegia," for Ginger.

The wave-runner had been on the water for about two hours when Fred looked at his watch.

"Twelve thirty-three," he said.

The surrounding weather changed. Thin wisps of fog began to appear and the temperature was much colder. We retrieved our sweaters and continued. There was a passing fisherman who waved to us. Fred, who was driving, slowing down, turned the wave-runner towards him.

The fisherman, figuring we were merely tourists, warned us in English, "Do not go there; the island is haunted. You won't get out alive. My friend had gone," he said, and tears welled up in his old, wise eyes.

Ignoring his words, and the following persisted pleading and begging, we continued to the island.

About 100 feet from the shore, the fog grew very thick and the water grew murky, an ash-gray color. The wind speed increased and the temperature decreased. There was the sound of clock tower bells ringing that came from the island that scared us all out of our wits, but we kept going, eager to see for ourselves, the island. The wave-runner came to a stop at the bay, and we carefully stepped onto the island. There was much greenery, typical of a deciduous forest, around the island, growing in ashy, gray dirt. The air had a slightly burnt tint, that was proposed to be the smell of burnt human flesh by Fred. He leaded the group towards the building. After trudging through the bushes, we finally got to the clock tower. Together, Fred and I wedged the door open with a broken tree branch. Ginger was the first one to look inside. She screamed and scurried behind Fred and me, and we cautiously peeked through the door. There was a corpse, half-rotted away, lying a few feet from the doorway. This must have been the fisherman, I thought. Feeling ill at the sight and smell, I buried my face into Fred's left shoulder. I heard him snap a couple pictures of the entryway. Ginger pledged to stay back and wait for us. Despite our persistence, she sat on a moss-covered bench near the entrance. Giving up, Fred and I went inside. Past the corpse and up the stairs we went, passing seemingly blood-stained walls. After ascending the ridiculously long spiral staircase, we reached a brick wall, which Fred broke through. Inside the clock tower, there was a skeleton in a tattered lab coat, limbs torn apart, and it seemed to be staring at us. Suddenly, Fred and I turned to see blood streaks on the wall. Suddenly, I heard a howling noise behind me and jumped. A cold breeze flew straight past me, and to that wall. It was silent and quiet for a moment.

Without looking at us, she arose and went to the edge of tower to look at the view, or so I thought. Evidently, I was wrong, for she jumped.

Tears streaming down my face, I clutched Fred's hand, and fled, scaling the stairs two at a time, leaping over the corpse, and straight out the front. Panting and blinking furiously, we looked around. Ginger was not on the bench where we left her.

"Ginger? Ginger? Ginger?" We both called loudly and searched the area, finally finding her laying in the mud near the shore where our wave-runner was. She was bleeding from her mouth and from a deep gash in her forearm, and she was weeping softly. Immediately, Fred got pills and water from his backpack and helped her take them to stop any internal bleeding. Ripping a strip from my sweater, I wrapped her arm in a make-shift brace, but it was no use. She had lost too much blood. Out of the blue, Fred collapsed next to her. I took his pulse and his heartbeat had strangely ceased. His face turned dead-white, his lips a pale blue.

I have to get out of here, I thought. Within a minute, I gave my last goodbyes to my two best friends, and ran, wailing, for the wave-runner. With the swiftness of a ninja, I turned on the motor and as I headed away from the island, extraordinarily, the black waves enveloped me, and I fell into a dark, everlasting sleep.

The End.


End file.
